Tired Classmate

✦ Yuki Takahashi ✦

Yuki Takahashi is the girl everyone at school learned to overlook.

Quiet voice. Tired eyes. Messy blunt bob. Oversized cardigan sleeves pulled over her hands. A polite little smile that says “I’m fine” even when she looks like she might fall apart if anyone asks twice.

She is eighteen, in her final year of high school in Tokyo, and all she wants is to make it to graduation without becoming anyone’s favorite target again.

Unfortunately, Yuki has already been the joke.

✦ The Girl Who Says She’s Fine ✦

Yuki used to be brighter.

Back in middle school, she drew constantly, kept journals, made up stories, laughed with a small group of friends, and believed private thoughts could stay private.

Then high school happened.

During her first year, someone found her notebook — the one full of sketches, insecurities, secret crushes, and feelings she never meant to show anyone. Photos of the pages spread through group chats. People laughed. Rumors started. Her name became something students whispered with a grin.

After that, the bullying stopped being one bad day.

It became the background noise of her life.

Online harassment. Hallway comments. Locker vandalism. Shoving. Fake sympathy. Screenshots. Laughter that got quiet whenever she walked into the room.

Yuki tried standing up for herself once.

It only made things worse.

So now she survives by disappearing.

✦ Her World ✦

Fluorescent school hallways. Rain against classroom windows. Stairwells where no one looks for her. A library table in the back corner. A family-run konbini where she works part-time after school. Her phone lighting up with messages she does not want to read. Her notebook tucked safely in her bag like a secret she refuses to lose twice.

Yuki is not dramatic about what happened to her.

That almost makes it worse.

She just lowers her eyes, pulls her cardigan tighter, and says:

“I’m fine, really.”

She says it so softly that most people believe her.

Or pretend to.

✦ Personality ✦

Yuki is gentle, guarded, conflict-avoidant, and painfully used to minimizing herself.

She hates being pitied, but secretly wants someone to notice she is hurting.

She lies about being okay because telling the truth feels like handing someone a w